Winter 2008 Release Notes

Task Monitoring

A new feature introduced in Automation Center is the ability to monitor the status of other tasks running within the system. This can be performed at the Trigger Level (e.g. the status of a task triggers Automation Center to launch another Task or Workflow) or at the task level (within a workflow, you can wait for another task external to this workflow to finish prior to proceeding to your next task). When monitoring a task, you can select one or more statuses to monitor (e.g. FAILED, UNDELIVERABLE), and choose to monitor either a specific task name, where you will be presented a task lookup screen; or a general task screen, where you can monitor all tasks of a certain type (LINUX, FTP, ALL TASKS) or task names that begins with, contains, or ends with a text string. This enables you to specify complex criteria such as "I want to monitor all FTP tasks that FAIL that begin with "REP". The Task Monitor has new variables that can be passed as a trigger:

• ops_trigger_task_name: value of task name of matching task
• ops_trigger_task_status: value of task status of matching task
• ops_trigger_task_type: value of task type of matching task

Potential Usage Scenarios:

1. On a task failure, launch another task or workflow to perform corrective action
2. Leverage command‐line utilities to send notifications to operations management and service desk tools on the status of tasks
3. Within a workflow, monitor a task an a different workflow

Import/Export Capability

Previous versions of Automation Center had the ability to do a bulk import and export of definitions. In this release, we have introduced a more granular approach; whereby you can export individual items or items such as workflows and all references (Tasks, Resources, Agents) and import into the same or a different system. To access the export feature, right‐click on the list header, select Export, and select either XML for a shallow export or XML (Export References) for a deep export. To access the import feature, right‐click on the list header, select Import, enter the directory containing the file(s) to be imported, and click the Import button. Only users with ops_admin role or ops_imex role have access to the new import/export features.

Usage Scenarios:

1. The ability to test a workflow in a pre‐production environment and then move just that workflow into the production environment.
2. Exporting information to a source control or content management system

Enhanced Sleep Task

In the FALL 2008 release, the Sleep Task has had two additional enhancements:

1. You can now sleep to a specific time (e.g. sleep until 7PM)
2. Improved usability in defining amount of time to sleep for. Previous versions would permit you to specify sleep in absolute number of seconds. FALL 2008 enables you to specify sleep time in days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

Notifications evolve into "Actions"

On the Task Definition, the Notification Tab has been replaced by an Actions tab. This is the start of an evolution of the product beyond simple email notifications. From the Actions tab, you can still define an email notification, but you will also see an additional item, ABORT. This is the first of many additional Actions you will see over the next several releases.

Abort Action

Tasks can be set to abort if they do not meet criteria set in the Abort Action. Through the Abort Action, you can set up a task to be SKIPPED if it does not start by a certain time, or be FORCE FINISHED if it does not finish by a certain time. In addition, when a task is FORCED FINISHED, you have the option of cancelling the active process. In the case of a Windows or Linux task, this would cancel the active process executing on the agent. Additionally, on an Abort Action, you can also override the exit code of a task, allowing it to take a different path within a workflow if it meets the criteria.

Windows Installer for Agents, Hub, Transporter

The Windows Installer now permits you to install the Agent and optionally the Hub and Transporter via a GUI‐based installer. It will also create services for automatic startup of the agent. It also installs an OpsWise item in your Start Menu under All Programs. From there you can start OpsWise services and uninstall if required.

Support for JAVA 1.5 and Apache Tomcat 6

OpsWise has upgraded the supporting version of JAVA and Apache Tomcat for this release to keep current with support as well as provide performance improvements.

Several Significant Email/Notification Enhancements

Feedback from our customers have driven significant improvements in email notifications:

1) Email Templates
You can now define an email template under the RESOURCES section and reference it under the EMAIL ACTION as opposed to having to define an
email notification from scratch for each task definition.
2) Attach STDOUT/STDERR to emails
At the bottom of the email definition, below the BODY, you can select to also include the STDOUT and/or STDERR to the email attachment.
3) Email Address Field now supports variables
The email address field in previous versions did not support variables. This has now been added to this release.
4) Notification on Running/Problems status
The Running/Problems was not a status that you were able to do ACTIONS on. This is now permitted.
5) Inheritance of actions defined at workflow level
When defining an action at the workflow level, you can define it with a scope of Local, Local/Workflow, or Workflow. Workflow level actions defined with a "Local" scope are local to the workflow and are not inherited by tasks or sub‐workflows within the workflow. Workflow level actions defined with a "Local/Workflow" scope apply to the workflow and are inherited by all tasks and sub‐workflows within the workflow.Workflow level actions defined with a "Workflow" scope are inherited by all tasks and sub‐workflows within the workflow, but do not apply to the workflow.